South Sudan Traffic Police officers seen counting money collected from motorists in Juba in 2019 | Credit | Courtesy

The National Revenue Authority cannot guarantee whether money collected by the traffic police officers on a regular basis is being remitted to the Single Treasury Account, the Commissioner General has said.

The traffic police have of recent been carrying out a massive crackdown on vehicles with factory-tint windows and charged motorists between 10-20 thousand South Sudanese Pounds as fine, despite the act being illegal.

Every checkpoint -in a day -has at least 6 -12 police officers collecting money from unsuspecting motorists. Motorists have described the act as extortion because most of them are stopped and fined despite not breaking any written traffic law.

The deployment en masse in Juba has subjected some motorists to multiple fines at every junction, intersections or roundabouts in Juba.

But the public has been wondering whether the government has sanctioned this “unscrupulous exercise” to increase its non-revenue base and whether these collections are actually channeled into its single account.

The single account was established this year by the NRA to ensure public resources are not diverted into individual pockets.

There were several cases of non-oil revenue being deposited into various accounts under the names of senior government officials.

When asked if this money reaches government coffers, NRA Commissioner General, Dr. Olympio Attipoe said his office cannot verify whether the traffic police department remits their share of collection to the offical government account.

“I cannot confirm or deny whether those monies that they are collecting with those particular financial forms are being remitted to the account. I don’t have any record on that now so it is something I need to also crosscheck,” he said.

Motorists have also raised issues with fines traffic police officers asking them to pay.amounts often more than what is indicated on the receipts.

The NRA boss said they are working to address that in order to track every pound collected by the officer against the number of receipts they possess.

“We are going to introduce security-enhanced financial forms…to make sure that we address some of the leakages in the system.,” Dr. Attipoe told Eye Radio’s Sundown program.

The Treasury Single Account is a Public Accounting System whereby government receipts, revenues, and income are collected into one single account. So far, it has collected 2.2 billion pounds and 13.8 million dollars in just two months – January and February